: Select inside/outside of a border This seems like a basic feature, but I'm missing it somehow. I have the the outline of a state with a discrete colorful border. I'd like to select the

@Martha945

Assuming that you don't have the border on a separate layer:


Use the fuzzy select (magic wand tool) to select the interior. Click and hold on any white/grey point inside, then drag until most of the inside is selected.





Use Select>Grow set to 4px or so. This will partially select the red border and also consume the small unselected areas in the middle.
With the magic wand still active, shift+click on the red border.


Hope that helps!

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@BetL875

This is a job for the quick mask feature. I allows you to paint on the selection itself as if it were the image -

So, after selecting the border itself with the magic wand as you did above, click on the small "hidden" button to the left of the horizontal scroll bar. That shows a red tinted translucent representation of your selection itself, and all painting you do will affect it - it is a grayscale drawable, so full white (255) means "fully selected" and black (0) means "unselected" (although the representation on this view is inverted: selected areas are shown as transparent, unselected as opaque). Then, just use the bucket-fill tool to fill u the outside (or inside) of your selection with "White" (Which will render the trnaslucent tint transparent), revert back to normal editing by clicking on the quickmask again - and you are done.

It certainly does take much fewer steps than Kylemit's answer.

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@Tiffany317

On selecting the red line we will end up with an outer and an inner selection of the area enclosed.

This big "hole" can be removed using an external script Remove Holes (from Selection) designed to just do that.

Also see How can I select the convex hull of an existing selection? for an example.

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@Marchetta832

Here's a simple way to let the fuzzy select drive the entire process.

TLDR: grab the border and invert the selection, then fill the outside and paste over the original image.

Steps By Step:


Original

Fuzzy Select Border

Select > Invert + Cut

Bucket Fill Tool Outside

Select All + Copy

Undo until Original Image + Paste

Layer > Anchor Layer

Fuzzy Select Outside + Cut

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@Nimeshi706

You can utilize multiple selection tools for a single selection. Try color selecting the stroke with the Magic Wand (adjust the tolerance at the top to refine the selection) then using any of the other selection tools like the Rectangle Marquee tool for example, hold shift and select the area within.

Holding Shift (while dragging a selection) with a selection tool adds the new selection to the current selection. Holding Alt subtracts from the current selection.

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